Keep it Together (2025)

Scanography, Ink on printer scanner, Wild Flowers

20  x 17  Inches 

Keep it Together examines the tension between fragility and resilience through the delicate medium of scanography, where inked surfaces and wildflowers are pressed onto the printer scanner. This method produces intimate, immediate impressions, echoing the pressure to maintain composure while navigating emotional and societal constraints. The work interrogates expectations placed on Black women to “keep it together” amid generational trauma, systemic oppression, and personal struggles. The flora becomes both metaphor and material, symbolizing growth, healing, and fleeting beauty in the midst of hardship. By using the scanner as a performative surface, I capture both the immediacy of gesture and the persistence of memory, creating images that are simultaneously vulnerable and assertive. The work prompts reflection on the balance between outward resilience and inner tumult, emphasizing the labor of maintaining presence and identity in spaces that demand perfection while denying care and recognition. Keep it Together is an ode to endurance, tenderness, and the poetic endurance of Black life and womanhood.